We are lucky to have many parks and open spaces in Enfield, one is Forty Hall an early Jacobean manor house. Sunday we decided to go there via the car boot in Enfield Town Market. We parked in the little car park behind the Grammar and County Schools. There is a rare Ginko tree in one corner, it is the small tree on the left.
A friend, whose green fingers extend to trees, helped the company move it here, not sure where from.
Walking to the market place along Holly Walk, I spotted a funnel spider in a wall of yellow London stock bricks. It is always a shock to witness the speed at which the spider, lurking deep suddenly appears to capture any fly or other creature that lands on the stoop of its home.
The bricks were made from London clay. There were several brick fields in Enfield and much of Enfield was built using these bricks about 1890 to 1910. The clay has been all used up so they cannot now be made. We passed another piece of history, a red brick building built by Henry VIII when he endowed the Grammar School. A later memory is the upper floor of a building that had Boots on the ground floor. Not sure what it is now though we walked past it!
So to Forty Hall. The link to the web site gives details of this exceptional park and house, I am blogging about our walk there. I’ve been going to forty Hall for over 50 years and Valerie for longer. Her parents were offered accommodation there but didn’t take the offer up, the shops were too far I suspect. Despite this we wandered into a part we had not been to before and found bluebells to boot!
It was secret with little tracks, quiet. The path we followed led to one we had often walked on.
And then we came to one of my favourite trees, a huge sweet chestnut.
Henry VIII had a palace here, Elsynge, it is now thought to be a major one. Archaeological excavations are carried out each summer. The site is somewhere behind this small oak.
Edward VI was there with his sister Elizabeth when he was told of his father’s, Henry VIII, death and that he was now King of England. It seems Henry planned much of the dissolution of the monasteries here and I like to think he wrote his hunting poems here maybe even Green Sleeves.
We walked where once walked Princes, Kings and Queens.
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